The Little Brothers' Club
by PaBurke
Summary: A coven of witches needed 5 little brothers of 'heroes' from different parts of the country. They might have misjudged those men.


The Little Brothers' Club

By PaBurke

Summary: A coven of witches needed 5 little brothers of 'heroes' from different parts of the country. They might have misjudged those men.

Spoilers: Season 2-3ish of all 5 universes.

Disclaimer: Not a one belongs to me.

Sam Winchester woke up bound and gagged. He heard men arguing over him.

"He might be dangerous!" someone exclaimed.

"I sure hope so," another man mumbled.

"Look Doc. Whoever that has been throwing us in here has been binding us according to our chances of getting out of here. You were tossed in here unconscious, first. Sean, next, unconscious with his hands tied. Me, unconscious with my hands and feet tied. This guy was last and he looks like a lamb for the slaughter."

"Calf," the man who was neither the doc, nor the logical one corrected. "A lamb will just lie quietly there as you slit its throat. A calf will struggle."

"I didn't want to know that," 'Doc' said.

"I vote that we wake him up and untie him. Sean?"

"I agree."

"Doc?"

"Fine, but if he is a psychopathic serial killer, I'm blaming you."

Even knowing that they agreed to help him, Sam couldn't stop the instinctive reaction to jerk when someone touched the rag in his mouth. The back of his head connected with someone's nose and the stranger started swearing. From the choice of words, Sam guessed that he had spent some time in the navy.

The other two men hovered near and Sam opened his eyes to view them.

"It's okay," 'Doc' whispered.

"We're not going to hurt you," the other man added. "We just want to get you free. Okay?"

"Okay?" 'Doc' asked. "I'm going to get the gag out of your mouth." The man slowly reached for Sam's head and Sam kept very still, until it was out.

"I've got a knife in my boot," he told them.

The third man walked around so that Sam could see him. He stopped dabbing him nose on his sleeve. Sam had only given him a little nosebleed. "Which one?"

Sam grinned. "Both of them."

The man grinned back. "You didn't have to prove me that right."

While the two other men slid the knives out and started sawing on Sam's bonds, he was assessing the situation. They were in a deep hole in the ground in the middle of a deciduous forest. "You tried yelling." It was more of a statement than a question, but he had to know what they had already attempted.

"No one's heard us," the man answered, not looking too insulted.

Sam nodded once. "Can't get far climbing?"

The man reached out and grabbed a bit of the dirt to show Sam that it was closer to sand. It just broke apart in his hand. It would never support the weight of a full grown man climbing out.

"What part of the FBI does your older brother work for?" 'Doc' asked.

Sam's head whirled to face the shortest man in the hole. That was quite the assumption.

'Doc' went on to explain. "I'm Doctor Charlie Eppes. My brother runs a team from the LA office and used to do fugitive recovery." He motioned to the other man sawing on the rope. "Sean Hotchner's brother runs the BAU out of Quantico, but he was grabbed in New York. Jared Booth's brother is the agent that works with the scientists from the Jeffersonian. He was grabbed in Florida. What about you?"

"My name's Sam. My brother and I were in Kansas investigating, last I remember. He gets moved around a lot and I was 'unofficially' helping him out." The half-lie slid off his lips smoothly.

'Doc' nodded as if he understood. Sean's brow furled as if he thought something was wrong and couldn't place it. He had decent instincts but no need to sharpen them. Jared's face hardened. He knew Sam had thrown in a lie somewhere, but wasn't going to call him on it yet. Finally, the two men were done. Sam stripped out of the rope, reclaimed his knives and stood. He walked straight to the wall to examine it for himself. "What do the rest of you do?"

"I'm a professor of Applied Mathematics at CalSci," Doc answered.

"I'm a chef," Sean said.

"I'm unemployed," Jared declared with a smile. "I just got back from a motorcycle tour of India." After a pause, he added. "I spent sometime in Naval Intelligence."

Sam accepted the statement for the threat it was and offered another half lie. "In the middle of my law degree." Sam made another circuit of the hole. He glanced at the rope that had been binding him. Twine really. Not enough to hold a man if they had anything to hook it to at the top. A marking on the twine made him stop and pick it up. Then the twine started to smoke and disintegrate and Sam dropped it in a hurry.

"We're not sure how they do that," Sean admitted.

Sam was not about to fill him in: it had to be witches.

Dean hated witches for good reason. Sam wasn't too fond of them either. He had to get out of here and get Dean far from here before the other brothers showed up. "The good news," he muttered, "is that they are not going to start anything until they pick up the little brother from the Northwest."

'Doc' brightened. "That's what I thought too. I was really expecting you to be from Washington. I had calculated the odds of you being from there at eighty percent."

Which made sense if you didn't know that five had more power than four in a spell, not to mention the 'X' such a group of incidents would make on a map. Sam looked at Sean and Jared. "Can the two of you lift or toss me up closer to the top?"

"Why you?" Eppes asked.

"I've got the strongest upper body," Sam answered. "And I've got my knives that I know how to use. I might be able to climb out with them."

Sam waited as Sean and Jared came to a decision. "You promise to call our brothers or try to help us get out of here," Jared demanded.

"I give my word."

Sean and Jared agreed and walked over to where Sam had judged that he would have the best chance of getting free. The men lifted him slowly above their heads. Sam reached as high as he could and he was still eighteen inches below the grassline. "I'm going to jump," he warned his human ladder.

"One-two-three-jump," Jared suggested.

"Works for me."

The platform under his feet got a little springy as they would try to push Sam up. "One," bounce, "Two," bounce, "Three," bounce. "Jump!"

Sam jumped and the men pushed and he reached as far as he could. One knife tangled in the grass. Sam swung his other armed hand upward as much as he could and slammed the knife further in the solid part of the forest floor. Neither knife slid. So Sam repositioned the lower knife and pulled his body to safety. He had kept his eyes peeled for the witches but none appeared. Finally, he was upright on the edge of the hole.

All three of the men were watching him with a mixture of pleasure, suspicion and wariness. "There's nothing near here that I can use to get you out. I'm going to do a quick perimeter check. Be right back."

"You promised," Sean called out.

"I keep my promises," Sam replied. And as soon as his perimeter search turned up nothing, he returned to the hole in the ground. He untied his boots and shucked off his pants. He figured that his jeans were the sturdiest and longest useful tool in the area. He wrapped one leg around his wrist and lay down on the ground. The other hand was holding a knife deep in the dirt far from the hole to anchor himself in place. He felt kinda stupid laying there in his boxers as he lowered one leg down to the other captives, but he figured that they wouldn't care.

"Doc first," Jared and Sam chorused.

Eppes rolled his eyes, but had to agree since he was so short that Jared and Sean had to lift him up so that he could reach the pant leg. Eppes slipped and slid and Sam had to do most of the work, pulling the professor to the top, but they managed.

As Eppes sat there trying to catch his breath, Sam lowered his pant leg again.

"You play basketball?" Jared asked Sean.

"Yeah."

"Any good?"

"Not bad."

"Go first anyway. My team went to state."

Sean nodded and accepted the suggestion. He jumped and it took two tries before he could grab hold of the pant leg. He climbed up easier than Eppes did. Sam lowered the pant leg again. Jared caught it with his first jump and nearly pulled Sam's arm out of the socket. He climbed up and showed off the muscles that he had been maintaining in a gym.

Jared and Sean explored the area while Sam got dressed. "I don't see any trail," Jared called out. "Sam, did you?"

An explosion shook the ground and they all turned to see the flames and smoke through the trees. "That would be my big brother," Sam boasted.

"No wonder he keeps getting moved around if he persists in that kind of property damage."

Sam laughed but collected his stuff and led the group at a quick jog to the scene of the crime. It took them almost twenty minutes to get to the burning house. Dean had done good; the entire house was unsalvageable and yet there was not threat of it spreading to the forest. Dean was leaning over the hood of the Impala, studying a map. He had a gun pointed at the group as soon as then crashed into the open. He pointed it away from Sam and toward Jared, who he had pegged at the most dangerous of the group.

"Sammy?" he called out.

"We're good. They're all little brothers of FBI agents too. They were captives with me."

"Oh." Dean's feelings and opinions were easy to read if one was his brother, but impossible if one wasn't. He put away his gun in the back of his jeans and folded up his map. "I was about to come rescue you."

"We rescued ourselves," Sean put out in the same, snotty, little-brother tone of voice that Sam had used countless times. Jared crossed his arms over his chest as if to say 'so there.'

Dean smirked as he walked forward. He could see through it as easily as if Sam had said it. "Good." As soon as he was even with the group, he and Sam exchanged a nod and –without telegraphing their intent before hand- punched out Jared and Sean respectively.

Dean had a gun on Eppes before he could think of running away. "Stay put and sit down," he ordered the professor.

Eppes obeyed with his eyes really wide. "Sam?"

"It's a long story," Sam explained. "We're not serial killers, but people think we are and won't listen to us, so we need to be gone before your brothers get here. Dean, give me a throwaway cell and I'll start calling the brothers."

Dean tossed the cell phone at him. "Have at it. I have to call some detective in Cascade, Washington and tell him that I_his_/I little brother is about to be kidnapped. That's where the rest of them are."

"Good." Sam was already dialing the number for information to the FBI. "They haven't had anything to eat or drink in a while, so I'm giving them some of our supplies."

"Fine." He was already on the phone and was writing down the number an operator was giving him. Finally the operator in Sam's ear gave him the phone number to the FBI switchboard. Sam argued with the woman until he had been transferred to the BAU.

"SSA Hotchner, please."

"Speaking," a calm voice answered.

"Good. Your brother, Sean, was kidnapped with two other little brothers of FBI agents. You need to come get him. He's fine and healthy, but could use a friendly face."

"I want to speak to him," Hotchner demanded. He had picked up right away that something was wrong with this phone call.

Sam paused in collecting the blankets and water and was appreciative when Dean shoved a piece of paper with the GPS coordinates in his face. Sam rattled them off to Hotchner and then ended the call. He turned to his brother who was glaring at the phone in his hand. "Problem?" he asked.

"Bossy, know-it-all detective. Stephen Ellison might have already been kidnapped, so we might have to find him and before Detective Ellison gets close. I_He's_/I not happy with me. You?"

"Hotchner will be here ASAP. You want to call LA or the Jeffersonian next?"

"Why do we have to call them at all? Just call the LEOs and get out of here. Let them make the phone calls."

"You're an older brother. Which would you prefer?"

Dean grumbled but said, "LA."

Sam handed him his disposable phone to show him the FBI switchboard number. "You're asking for SSA Eppes."

Dean started calling it and Sam walked over to the three men and passed out blankets and water. He even gave Eppes a couple of apples from his personal stash.

"I can call my brother," Eppes offered.

Sam grinned. "Thanks but no thanks. He'll be here as soon as he can, I'm sure."

"We're in Kansas, aren't we?"

Sam nodded, surprised that the professor could tell that from the GPS numbers he had overheard. "The house fire should keep critters away and the water and apples should last you until someone shows up. Use the blankets and you'll be fine."

"You could have left us in the pit," Eppes reminded him.

"I keep my word," Sam said firmly.

Dean finished yelling at SSA Eppes and chucked the phone into the fiery house. He handed the other disposable phone to Sam. "You can call the last Fed. If I have to argue with another one today, I might shoot myself."

Sam called the number and while it took a while to connect, he found Dean's thermos of hot coffee. He picked it up to hand it to Eppes and Dean caught him beforehand.

"You can't give them my coffee," he demanded.

"Watch me."

Dean dodged ahead and grabbed at the thermos. "No. Mine."

Sam jerked it out of his brother's reach. "It might get cold tonight before anyone shows up. It'll help."

"Sammy, No."

"Yes." Dean grabbed for it again and this time caught it.

There was a tussle and the phone fell just as someone was answering it, so Sam had to release the thermos to pick up the phone.

"Agent Booth?" he asked.

"Who is this?" the man demanded.

Sam was as tired as Dean concerning the bossy FBI agents. "Look. Your brother Jared Booth is at these GPS coordinates:" he rattled them off. "He needs a ride." Sam ended the call and tossed that phone into the flames.

Dean had started up the Impala and was revving the engine. Sam waved once to Eppes and climbed in. He relaxed for all of a minute before deciding that coffee sounded good. He looked around but couldn't find the thermos.

"Dean, where's the coffee?"

He looked up in time to see Dean's ears turn pink. His brother had handed it to Eppes after all.

Sam had to laugh. "Nevermind."


End file.
